The present invention relates to a computer-telephony integration system (hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cCTI systemxe2x80x9d) and an information reception processing method to provide an information processing environment for integrating communications with a computer, and particularly relates to a CTI system and an information reception processing method in which information (e.g. multimedia information with voice, text and image) sent from a transmitter side by an arbitrary information transmission means can be automatically converted and transmitted to a connection destination allowed to receive the information by a receiving-side subject in accordance with the reception environment in the connection destination.
In recent years, a CTI system for integrating a telephone with a computer has been demanded under an environment of call center, office, SOHO (Small Office Home Office), virtual enterprise, CALS (Commerce At Light Speed), or the like. Under the aforementioned environment, the CTI system uses multimedia information (e.g. voice, text and image) to construct an effective and efficient communication environment by using a multimodal communication means such as a telephone, a facsimile equipment or a personal computer or to construct an effective and efficient work aiding environment for associating a telephone system with a work system such as a groupware system or a business application by the multimodal communication means. For example, in call center work or office work, such a CTI system has been demanded for integrating computer processing with a conventional telephone system to aid work information with use of the telephone system or for associating one information system with another information system to aid integrated information of a system under an internet/intranet environment and the conventional telephone system to thereby attain improvement in work efficiency and customer""s satisfation.
Incidentally, as a conventional techniques of this type, there is a unified messaging technique in which communication means using various media such as voice, text and image information from various information appliances such as a telephone, facsimile equipment and a personal computer are unified in order to improve communication efficiency in office or SOHO. The technique is described in Workgroup Computer Report Vol. 19, No. 4, 1996, pp.12-17 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,524,137.
As another conventional technique, there is a telephony agent technique in which a person in charge of call center work in the past or a person having skill in call center work is automatically specified as a destination of telephone call by computer processing so that improvement in work efficiency and customer""s satisfication is attained by automatic acceptance/transfer and reduction of human load in a great deal of telephone calls occurring in call center work. The technique is described in Workgroup Computing Report Vol. 19, No. 4, 1966, pp.18-21.
However, the aforementioned conventional techniques merely control a destination of connection but do not control the manner of transmission of information in accordance with the reception environment on the destination of connection. There arises therefore a problem that user""s transmission/reception of information can be performed only by a transmission/reception means designated on the system in advance and that a user is not allowed to select a contact means freely. As a result, the CTI technique and the unified messaging technique having association with groupware have not achieved any situation in which a user is allowed to have effective use of a communication environment that the user can use various connection means such as a telephone, facsimile equipment and a personal computer and various media such as voice, text and image.
An object of the present invention is to provide an information reception processing method and a computer-telephony integration system in which transmission control can be performed in accordance with the information reception environment of a receiving-side subject when multimedia communication information is transmitted from a sending-side subject to the receiving-side subject.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a recording medium on which programs and data to be used in the above-mentioned information reception processing method and computer-telephony integration system are recorded.
In order to achieve the above objects, according to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided an information reception processing method for transmitting information from an arbitrary information sending source to a specific receiving-side subject which is a destination of information transmission, the method comprising the steps of: preliminarily registering reception-environment information including, at least, contact-enabled-means information for indicating means allowed to receive information, contact-point information for designating a contact point of the means allowed to receive information, and reception-condition information for indicating a condition of information reception at the contact point, in accordance with an original destination in each of receiving-side subjects of information reception; and performing contact adjustment by referring to the reception-environment information when information destined for any one of the receiving-side subjects arrives to thereby acquire the contact-enabled-means information and contact-point information which can be received at the destined receiving-side subject, making judgment as to whether or not the arrived information satisfies a reception condition indicated by the reception-condition information of the receiving-side subject, and converting the arrived information so as to satisfy the reception condition when the reception condition is not satisfied and transmitting the converted information to the contact point.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a computer-telephony integration system for transmitting information from an arbitrary information sending source to a specific receiving-side subject which is a destination of information transmission, the system comprising: a reception-environment-information registration means for registering reception-environment information including, at least, contact-enabled-means information for indicating means allowed to receive information, contact-point information for designating a contact point of means allowed to receive information, and reception-condition information for indicating a condition of information reception at the contact point, in accordance with an original destination in each of receiving-side subjects of information reception; and contact adjustment means for performing contact adjustment by referring to the reception-environment information when information destined for any one of the receiving-side subjects arrives to thereby acquire the contact-enabled-means information and contact-point information which can be received at the destined receiving-side subject, making judgment as to whether or not the arrived information satisfies a reception condition indicated by the reception-condition information of the receiving-side subject, and converting the arrived information so as to satisfy the reception condition and transmitting the converted information to the contact point.
For example, the aforementioned reception-environment-information registration means may include storage means for storing reception-environment information, and means for accepting a reception-environment-information setting operation from the outside of the system.
Here, preferably, the aforementioned means for accepting a reception-environment-information setting operation has a function for displaying a reception-environment-information setting screen to carry out the reception-environment-information setting operation, a function for accepting an input in accordance with the screen, and a function for making the storage means store reception-environment setting data set by the accepted input.
Preferably, the function for displaying a reception-environment-information setting screen displays a screen on which at least contact-enabled-means information and contact-point information can be inputted.
Further, the system may further comprise transmission-environment-information registration means for setting a condition of a request for reception in the information sending side with respect to every original destination in each of the receiving-side subjects.
Here, the transmission-environment-information registration means may include a storage means for storing transmission-environment information, and means for accepting a transmission-environment-information setting operation from the outside of the system.
According to a further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a recording medium for recording a program to be executed by a computer to transmit information from an arbitrary information sending source to a specific receiving-side subject which is a destination of the information transmission, wherein the program is to be executed by the computer in a manner so that the computer performs processing of: preliminarily registering reception-environment information including, at least, contact-enabled-means information for indicating means allowed to receive information, contact-point information for designating a contact point of the means allowed to receive information, and reception-condition information for indicating a condition of information reception at the contact point, in accordance with an original destination in each of receiving-side subjects of information reception; and performing contact adjustment by referring to the reception-environment information when information destined for any one of the receiving-side subjects arrives to thereby acquire the contact-enabled-means information and contact-point information which can be received at the destined receiving-side subject, making judgment as to whether or not the arrived information satisfies a reception condition indicated by the reception-condition information of the receiving-side subject, and converting the arrived information so as to satisfy the reception condition when the reception condition is not satisfied and transmitting the converted information to the contact point.
For example, the reception-environment-information registration may contain a process for storing reception-environment information, and a process for accepting a reception-environment-information setting operation from the outside of the system.
The process for accepting a reception-environment-information setting operation may contain a process for displaying a reception-environment-information setting screen to carry out the reception-environment-information setting operation, a process for accepting an input in accordance with the screen, and a process for making the storage means store reception-environment setting data set by the accepted input.
The process for displaying a reception-environment-information setting screen may display a screen on which at least contact-enabled-means information and contact-point information can be inputted.
The function for displaying a reception-environment-information setting screen displays a screen on which information for indicating whether the information can be received on the receiving side or not, and information for indicating a storage means for recording the sent information when reception is disabled, can be further inputted.
The program may further contain a communication means for performing data communication with an information processing apparatus in the outside of the system, and the process for accepting a reception-environment-information setting operation may contain a process for transmitting programs and data to a requester through the communication means to carry out the process for displaying a reception-environment-information setting screen and carry out the function for accepting an input in accordance with the screen when a reception-environment-information setting request is accepted from the outside of the system, and a process for receiving reception-environment setting data sent from the requester through the communication means and delivering the data to the function for making the storage means store information.
According to a still further aspect of the resent invention, there is provided a recording medium for recording a program to be executed by a computer for transmitting information from an arbitrary information sending source to a specific receiving-side subject which is a destination of information transmission, wherein the program contains: a program for specifying a sender of telephone or facsimile and sender information and controlling automatic call distribution; a program for controlling interactive voice response (IVR); a groupware program for achieving communication using voice, text and image information between apparatuses connected to a network; a contact manager program for registering and managing reception-environment-condition information containing, at least, contact-enabled-means information, contact-point information and reception-condition information with respect to a reception subject; and a telephony agent program for making reference to the reception-environment information at the time of arrival of information destined for a receiving-side subject to thereby acquire contact-enabled-means information and contact-point information in the receiving-side subject in the destination, judging whether the arrived information satisfies a reception condition indicated by the reception-condition information in the receiving-side subject, and converting the arrived information to satisfy the reception condition when the arrived information does not satisfy the condition.
As a more specific mode of the aforementioned computer-telephony integration system according to the present invention, the following means may be used in combination.
Means (ANI: Automatic Number Identification/DNIS: Dialed Number Identification Service) for specifying sender and receiver information of telephone or facsimile, means (ACD: Automatic Call Distribution) for distributing call of telephone or facsimile automatically, means (IVR: Interactive Voice Response) for performing automatic response by automatically recognizing voice information, for example, from telephone and converting the voice information into text information or converting text information into voice information for telephone, means for converting image information, for example, from facsimile into image information or converting text information into image information for facsimile, means for sending/receiving text-format electronic mail as a message, means for unified messaging for multimedia electronic mail, desirably, such as voice mail, facsimile mail and text mail, means for registering/managing location/contact-point information for another system newly and additionally associated with the means for registering/managing location/contact-point information for a user""s system, means for registering and holding a receiver contact condition containing at least two requisites among the requisites consisting of propriety of contact, contact-enabled means, priority, connection format, used language, contact content, and transfer route only on the receiving side or independently both on the sending side and on the receiving side or selectively from the receiving side condition on the sending side, and a telephony agent means for routing information by specifying a contact point at which a user can receive the information at the time of reception of telephone, facsimile or electronic mail destined for the user, and performing media conversion and condition adjustment automatically on the basis of a contact condition in which the user can receive the information.